NEW YORK, Sept 3 \u2014 Two-time champion Naomi Osaka overcame a flurry of mistakes to fight \u200bpast Czech Katerina Siniakova 6-2 5-7 6-1, finding her mettle to reach the third round of the U.S. Open on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The 13th seed has spent \u200cyears taming her own tendency toward self-recrimination, and showed the best evidence of her new career outlook as she \u2060reclaimed her composure with a bathroom \u200bbreak before the third set at Arthur \u2060Ashe Stadium.<\/p>\n
“The match was definitely really tough. I don’t know, I just felt \u200clike I had to \u200cfight,” said Osaka, who will next play Belgian Elise Mertens.<\/p>\n
“I think I was \u2060a little bit too hard on myself, \u2060so I took the bathroom break, tried to regroup and have no regrets.”<\/p>\n
The winner in 2018 and 2020 was pristine through the first set, with just four unforced errors, as she broke her opponent to love in the fourth game. The Czech did herself no favours with three double faults in the \u200ceighth game before letting Osaka break again on set \u200bpoint with an unforced error.<\/p>\n
It was a different story in the second set, where Osaka’s form dropped just as Siniakova hit her stride, and the Japanese 13th seed put up 20 unforced errors that gave the Czech too many chances.<\/p>\n
After trading breaks twice in the second set, Osaka tapped her racket on the court in frustration after whacking a backhand into the net and \u200bhanded Siniakova the break with another backhand error in the penultimate game.<\/p>\n
Osaka went to the locker \u200croom before the \u200cthird set, \u2060a decision that helped her move on.<\/p>\n
“I just told myself that it’s an honour to play on this court,” said Osaka, who reached the semi-finals a year ago. “I just want to keep playing in front of you guys, if possible.”<\/p>\n
She emerged back \u200con the court with new \u200bresolve, sprinting through the first three games \u200cand saving two break points \u2060in the fifth \u200bbefore closing it out with an unreturnable serve.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New YorkEditing by \u200bChristian Radnedge)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK, Sept 3 \u2014 Two-time champion Naomi Osaka overcame a flurry of mistakes to fight \u200bpast Czech…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2879,2878,2881,1796,2880,53,54,2883,2884,50,2882,28,2877,2885,2369],"class_list":["post-65015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-cars","tag-classifieds","tag-homes","tag-international","tag-jobs","tag-local","tag-news","tag-radio","tag-salt-lake","tag-sports","tag-television","tag-tennis","tag-traffic","tag-utah","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}